ShoWest is a convention for movie theater owners, so it’s no surprise that the buzz word of the con is “3D”. Movie theaters are looking to make more money, and so far 3D screens have proven to be vastly more profitable than traditional screens. Enter Michael Bay, who appeared last night to accept his Vanguard Award for Excellence. Apparently Bay doesn’t think 3D is “Awesome”.

“3D? I don’t know… I might be old school. I think it might be a gimmick,” said Bay, later adding: “I don’t know, we’ll see. I’m looking forward to [James] Cameron’s picture.”

When Bay made the comment on stage at the award reception, it drew gasps from the crowd of theater owners. Someone asked if Bay would ever consider shooting Transformers 3 using 3D cameras, and Bay explained that even if it wasn’t a gimmick or fad, 3D is too fragile for his explosive-level of filmmaking.

“The way I shoot is too aggressive for 3D cameras. It’s a time consuming thing,” said Bay. “Who knows… It might be a fad. I’m kinda old school. I’m old school because I like to shoot on film. I like anamorphic lenses, and that is old school.”

I took the opportunity at the press conference to ask Bay about the scenes he show for Revenge of the Fallen using IMAX cameras.

“It looks pretty awesome. It was much easier to shoot than stereoscopic,” Bay joked. “It’s a bitch to perfect in terms of the digital work, the amount of rendering you need to do that goes towards the detail, but I think it’s going to be awesome.”